Tara: Week 3

Reflection on the Week:

In my last reflection I talked about how I wanted to get more information about how my students were thinking about many different kinds of arithmetic problems, so I decided to do subtraction problems this week. Due to scheduling at my school this week, I only had time to do one number talk. In my first two classes I decided to give subtraction problems.

The minute I put the problem on the board, I could immediately read my students’ faces—they were not confident and some even chuckled or mumbled curse words under their breath. When the number talk began, I got four or five different answers in each class. In reflecting on this, I am glad that my students feel comfortable providing multiple responses to a problem that they know there is only one answer to. However, I could tell that students were nervous and not confident to share their strategies. When strategies were shared, students had a really difficult time explaining their thinking. Although several students did use the traditional algorithm, many others did not. However, many students somehow got confused in their thinking about subtraction—whether it was taking away too many and not adding some back in at the end, or trying to use strategies that they used for addition, which did not transfer over perfectly for them in this case. I really pushed students to try and make sense of what other students had done in their heads and where their thinking may have gone astray. However, I could tell that my students were not as interested in this number talk as they had been previously.

This happened in both of the first classes that I did this number talk in. However, for the second two classes I decided to go back to addition. I did not want to lose the steam that I had from the previous number talks and I still wanted students to be excited by the math and the number talks themselves. Hence, I went back to addition. The problems that I decided to use were a variation on the previous week’s number talks, except this time using 100s. The problem I used was 109 + 26. This number talk went much better than the subtraction ones. I had more student participation, more student-to-student interaction, and more enthusiasm from my class. I think that while this problem was more difficult for them, and in fact I did get multiple answers for the solution in both classes, it was something that they had been thinking about previously. Because they had previous experience with this type of problem, they were able to follow along and easily figure out where their classmates may have made an error. They did not have to spend time and brain energy trying to understand the problem itself or trying to understand new strategies presented, as in the subtraction number talks , instead they could focus on methods that they had previously seen and why/how someone may have made an error. I am very glad I decided to switch up this number talk because I think that my students were able to get more out of it, and I think I was able to maintain buy in with these two classes.

Questions that I still have:

1)      How am I going to proceed with my first two classes?

 I understand that while my decision to use subtraction may have caused some students to disengage from the problem, I am hoping to bring back addition this week and see how it goes. I am hoping that brining back an addition problem that can employ similar methods as before will allow students to feel confident again with number talks and will help them gain more buy in with them as well.

2)      For my other classes, should I keep going with a string of similar problems to the ones that I have already done?

I think that I do want to continue using similar addition strings, but add in more complexities such as two triple digit number addition instead of a triple digit and a double digit. I think that this adds a layer of complexity in that students now have to keep track of more numbers and decide how they can move numbers more flexibly. I may continue with one more number talk involving a triple-digit number and a double digit number.

3)      Something I am still thinking about and wondering about is how to get new students to participate. I have had many of the same students participate in the number talks in the past few weeks and I want to be sure that other students are able to have their voices heard. I am wondering if I should do a written explanation at some point soon, just so that all students have an opportunity to share their idea and then I can consolidate results and show them how many different methods were used and how many people chose each method.

4)      Another thing that I am still thinking about is how to get students to try methods other than their own. I think that some students have begun to do this but I am not sure about students who do not feel comfortable sharing their ideas with the class and are a little more quiet. I have tried to ask students to raise their hands as a way to show if they used particular methods once they are up on the board, but this is sometimes difficult to tell if that is really the method that they used or if they are just raising their hand to raise it. Also, I have noticed that some students never vote.

5)      I am also thinking about how I can get some feedback from students about his process so far. I think it could be beneficial to see how they are feeling about number talks. In the next few weeks I might provide them with some kind of reflection piece about number talks just to get a feel for how and what they are thinking about the experience so far.